[Labs-l] [Wikitech-l] Maria DB

Thu Feb 14 17:26:01 UTC 2013

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 05:14:31PM +0100, Mark Bergsma wrote:
> Debug information is *highly useful* in a production setup, and we try
> to run all our core applications with it so we have a chance to debug
> issues when they occur.
> 
> I think the only reason distributions omit debug information is to
> save disk space.

A lot of Debian packages ship -dbg alongside the main package, that
contains the stripped-out debug symbols in /usr/lib/debug (gdb loads
those automatically, either based on the filename or build-id). The
toolchain handles this more or less automatically, but it still needs
maintainer action to define this separate package and upload it with
every package upload.

Ubuntu has experimented in the past with the concept of automatically
generating and shipping symbols for *all* packages, packaged up in a
"ddeb"s (same format as .deb) and shipped via a different repository
that isn't mirrored by all of the downstream mirrors.

This was years ago, I'm not sure what has happened since then. I
remember being discussed in Debian as well, but it was never adopted,
probably because noone ever implemented it :)

For MySQL/MariaDB, it seems that the Debian packages don't ship a -dbg
package by default. That's a shame, we can ask for that. As for the rest
of Asher's changes, I'd love to find a way to make stock packages work
in our production setup, but I'm not sure if the maintainer would
welcome the extra complexity of conditionally switching behaviors. We
can try if you're willing to, Asher :)

Regards,
Faidon